


The Rebel and the Pauper

by aralias



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen, Role Reversal, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 14:20:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2696171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vila gets worked up about class issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rebel and the Pauper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Galoshins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galoshins/gifts).



> This is rather more about Vila than Blake. I hope you will forgive me.

Vila had mentioned it once, ages ago, thinking to get the whole set. Space City, Freedom City, Solar City. The three greatest ambitions a man could have... beyond being rich and comfortable and shacked up with at least three beautiful ladies, of course, but that sort of ambition wasn’t nearly so achievable for a Delta as it was for an Alpha. _Whereas_ when you had a spaceship, and Vila liked to think he at least had some of a spaceship... well, you almost might as _well_ hit all of the Triumvirate.

Blake had... actually, he _hadn’t_ refused to go. He’d just kept walking, out of the room, like Vila hadn’t been calling suggestions of next locations after him. Vila had complained to Gan, Zen and Jenna, who’d still been on the flight deck. None of them had been very sympathetic, really. And they called themselves friends. Well, Zen didn’t, but Vila considered him a friend anyway, and still did – despite Zen’s lack of support. He was a forgiving sort, though. Always had been.

Now, obviously, the Liberator wouldn’t have gone to Space City or Freedom City if those two locales hadn’t been home to some very useful people. Well, Vila had tried to argue that Solar City probably had lots of useful people living there too! Blake hadn’t been interested - until now.

Half way to Star One, and Zen had blown a fuse or something. Nothing too drastic, but it would slow them down unless they could locate a replacement. And they could – in Solar City where the main pleasure-dome computer apparently ran on the same hardware that Zen did. Not too many alternatives out in the outskirts, so they’d _had_ to go there.

Vila had just started getting excited when Blake had announced who would going down to the satellite – and more importantly who wouldn’t be.

“You can’t mean it,” Vila protested, hurrying after Blake as he strode down the corridor. “Not again.”

They reached the teleport area and Blake descended the stairs quickly, as though this would help him get away from Vila’s protestations. Avon and Cally were already there – Avon clipping on his bracelet and Cally checking her blaster. Orac was sitting on the teleport desk, his lights flashing.

“You wouldn’t-“ Vila said. “You _couldn’t_ -”

“Vila, there are many things I can’t do,” Blake said.

“Nice of you to admit it,” Avon said.

“-but I like to think that making sensible decisions about crew deployment will never be one of them,” Blake finished as though he hadn’t heard Avon.

“I am sensible,” Vila protested.

Blake sighed irritably. “The only reason you want to come is to make use of Solar City’s entertainment facilities.”

“Now Blake that’s not fair,” Cally said. For a moment Vila looked at her with trust and appreciation, and then she said smiled and said, “He probably also wants to drink as much as he can while doing it.”

“And rob a few unsuspecting tourists,” Avon put in. “Vila is a man of many and varied interests.”

“Outrageous,” Vila said as Blake clipped on his own teleport bracelet. “Slander. Prejudice, that’s what it is. I know I made a mistake when we stopped off at Space City, but I’m a different man now. Didn’t I prove myself at Freedom City? Avon and I staying behind on the ship, good as gold?”

Avon’s back seemed to stiffen, and Blake turned back towards Vila, one eyebrow raised. “Don’t you mean - good as ten million credits?”

Vila’s mouth dropped open. “You _know_ ,” he said accusingly.

“Well, obviously,” Blake said.

“And you’re still letting Avon go down?” Vila said, his sense of injustice hot and strong.

“We’re going to steal part of a computer,” Blake explained. “I could hardly leave Avon behind, now could I?”

“The lesson is,” Avon said, with a smile, “that it pays to be indispensable, rather than a pain.”

“He’ll be closely supervised,” Blake said with a roll of his eyes. He stepped into the teleport bay. “Right, put us down, Orac. Oh, and Orac – do not, under any circumstances, teleport Vila down to the station.”

“Your instructions were perfectly clear the first time. There is no need to repeat them,” Orac said.

The teleport lever moved down seemingly of its own accord, and Blake, Avon and Cally shimmered and disappeared, undoubtedly reappearing down on Solar City, Vila’s third greatest ambition.

“Bloody Alphas,” Vila said moodily. “They always stick together, don’t they, Orac? Yes,” he said darkly, not waiting for Orac’s response as he warmed to his theme of injustice and favouritism. “It wasn’t even my idea to go to Freedom City. It was Avon’s idea - he made me go. Well, sort of.”

“That is not an accurate recollection of the incident,” Orac said.

“Oh go away,” Vila said. “Or better yet, teleport me down to the station so I can go away.”

“Blake has expressly forbidden me to do anything of the sort,” Orac said, “even if I were inclined to help you, which I am not. You must be aware of these orders, since you were present at the time they were given and you do not appear to be suffering from deafness.”

“Eh?” Vila said, and then he sighed. That wasn’t going to work. He’d need a much better trick before Orac would... Actually, that was a thought. Orac was not infallible. He could be tricked. In fact, Avon had tricked him into shrinking himself so that Vila could carry him more conveniently around Freedom City. He could probably be tricked again.

“But we don’t have to follow Blake’s orders, do we?” Vila said, crouching down so his eyeline was level with Orac’s lights. “Blake’s a revolutionary – he _wants_ people to disobey orders. That’s his whole _raison d’etre!_ I think this is probably a test, don’t you?”

“No,” Orac said, and Vila made a face. “Analysis of Blake’s previous behaviour indicates a high propensity to anger when his orders are ignored or countermanded. This is usually coupled with a sense of disbelief. Even an imbecile would have noticed this.”

“I’m not an imbecile,” Vila protested.

“Hence my deduction that you were aware of Blake’s true meaning.”

“And his meaning is that he wants me to stay on the ship,” Vila said glumly. He stood up again, and sat on the desk instead. “I get it. Even though I’ve never done any harm to anybody. Didn’t we win on Freedom City? No need to answer, Orac – we did. We won. _I_ won... with a bit of help from you, of course,” he added quickly. “Not that it makes any differences to Mr High and Mighty Blake. No, he expects his orders to be obeyed, and they are, so he keeps expecting it.” Vila shook his head. “He’s an Alpha, that’s what it is. It’s bred into him. Sad, really. Blake would’ve been a lot happier as a Delta. Could’ve called himself a real man of the people.” He sighed. “I know I’d’ve been happier as an Alpha. And I wouldn’t have made such a pig’s ear of it as Blake and Avon and Jenna have, either, I tell you that, Orac. No, I wouldn’t.”

“Are you planning on keeping up this stream of mindless complaints until Blake and the others return to the ship?” Orac asked.

“Why not?” Vila said. “Nothing else to do. If I go back to the flight deck Jenna will only tell me I got what I deserved. She’s a cold lady.”

“You may have nothing better to do, but I most certainly do,” Orac said. “I cannot think properly while you persist! So - in the interests of settling the matter, once and for all, I will show you what would have happened if you, Vila Restal, had been born an Alpha and Roj Blake had been born a Delta.”

“You can do that?” Vila asked, interested despite himself. “What am I talking about, of course you can. The first thing you did was show us the future. And you got it right too.” He got off the table, and looked at Orac expectantly.

“Well, go on then,” he prompted when nothing happened.

“I will need you to procure a screen,” Orac said. “Unless you expect me to project the image into your brain.”

“Now I know you can’t do that,” Vila said. “Or can you?” He grimaced – the memory of the indoctrination wards rising to the top of his mind. “Actually, on second thoughts, I don’t want to know. I’ll get you a screen.”

The medical lab was just a few doors along from the teleport area. Vila unplugged the portable monitor from the scanning computers and wheeled it down the corridor. When he got there, he realised there was nowhere to plug it in, but this didn’t seem to matter because Orac had already taken control of it and an image was forming on the small screen.

It looked like... the _same_ teleport area Vila was currently standing in. His own voice issued from the tinny speakers set into the side of the monitor:

“You wouldn’t- You _couldn’t_ -”

“Vila, there are many things I can’t do,” Blake’s voice said.

Vila gave the side of Orac’s case a smack. “You’ve got it wrong, you stupid box. This is just a recording of what happened earlier.”

“Wrong,” Orac said. “It is a projection of an alternate present. I have constructed it meticulously.”

“But it’s exactly the _same_ ,” Vila pointed out as, on screen, Avon sarcastically praised Blake’s knowledge of his own weaknesses and Blake continued speaking as though he hadn’t heard this.

“No,” Orac said. “There are several differences.”

Vila peered closer and grimaced. “Have I got a _moustache_?”

“Correct. Blake has an earring and is missing one of his toes,” Orac said. “He is also almost five hundred grams lighter than he is in this reality.”

“Well, I can’t believe I didn’t spot that,” Vila said sarcastically. “Five hundred grams? He’s a totally different person.”

“That is exactly what he is _not_ ,” Orac said. “And neither, of course, are you.”

The image on the screen faded away as Blake, Avon and Cally teleported off the ship.

“I don’t get it,” Vila said. “How could I have ended up back on this ship? What you showed was if I’d been born an Alpha, right?”

“That _is_ what you asked for,” Orac said.

“So, I would have led a completely different life,” Vila pressed. “I didn’t grow up amongst the service grades, I didn’t have to steal to survive. Nobody gave me a lockpick as a fourth birthday present, or took me on raiding parties because I was small enough to fit in the vents-”

“Correct,” Orac said. “None of those experiences happened to the Vila Restal you observed on the screen just now.”

“So what happened?” Vila demanded. “ _How_ did I end up here? I wasn’t a political leader like Blake, was I?”

“Of course not,” Orac said.

“So what happened?” Vila said.

“You were,” Orac said, “as I understand it, bored.”

“ _Bored_?” Vila repeated in disbelief. “Bored? So bored I took a trip to Cygnus Alpha?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Orac said. “You knew that such a trip was the inevitable consequence of your actions, but this was not enough to deter you. As an Alpha, you did not need money to survive, so you were able to plan your crimes more carefully. You concocted highly elaborate schemes to steal items you had no practical use for but which were well protected – Space Major Tarvin’s tie-pin, Supreme Commander Servalan’s Badge of Honour-”

“Wait a minute - I stole from _Servalan_?” Vila asked, impressed with his alternate self despite the fact that he was still apparently following Blake’s orders.

“ _Attempted_ to steal is perhaps a more accurate description,” Orac said. “Servalan’s defences were most effective, and you were arrested and your property confiscated. Over four hundred stolen objects were discovered in your apartment.”

Vila whistled. Assuming he’d taken one thing from every job that was an awful lot of robberies. He’d been busy.

He’d imagined wealth and contentment for himself as an Alpha, but being a cat burglar wasn’t bad either. In fact, now Vila came to think of it, he thought he probably _would_ be bored sitting around doing nothing in a fancy residence. And nothing took the edge off boredom like a good crime – and he should know, Vila thought, considering he was the greatest thief in the Federation, however you looked at it.

“You were sentenced to Cygnus Alpha without trial,” Orac continued. “Roj Blake was put into the holding cell a few hours after you were. His career had followed a remarkably similar path to that of the Blake you know. Growing up amongst the poorest Dome dwellers, he woke to the plight of the oppressed earlier in life, but found it difficult to gather the influential followers he needed, due to his lower class. Nevertheless, four years before your deportation, he had gathered a substantial following. By the time he was captured by Space Commander Travis, he was viewed as sufficient threat that the Federation staged his repentance and rehabilitation into society. When you met him, he had just been informed that he had once been the leader of a rebel group known as the Freedom Party-”

“And then we ended up here,” Vila said. “Exactly the same-”

“There _were_ differences,” Orac protested.

“I know, I know,” Vila said, “but hardly-”

“ _Vila_ ,” Blake’s voice said from the speaker grill in the wall. “Teleport now. _Hurry_ , Vila.”

Vila jumped, but still managed to get to the controls before Orac did. He yanked the lever, and turned back to the teleport bay in time to see Avon, Blake and Cally appear in a ripple of the air. All of them, to a lesser or greater extent, were covered in a thick, viscous pink goo that was now also puddling on the floor. Avon was holding an equally goo-covered metal contraption in one of his hands. It was presumably the technical whatsit they’d gone down to get.

“That was quick,” Vila said. “You can’t even have had time to sample the local wines.”

Avon gave him a dark look and stalked off to what was either a one-on-one session with Zen’s hard-drive or a shower.

“The pleasure machine exploded after Avon removed the core-twelve-resistor,” Blake explained. “As far as we know, nobody got hurt, but they _did_ get covered in this stuff-” He scraped some of it off the back of his hand and onto the floor with the back of his other hand. “As did we.”

“I believe this substance is used to convince customers of the machine that they are in contact with other beings,” Cally said. She was somehow significantly cleaner than either Blake or Avon. “Particularly sexual cont-”

“Yes, all right,” Blake said. “I get the idea. So, what you’re saying is I’m technically covered in beautiful women. Charming.” He wiped another large swathe of goo off his cheek, and raised an amused eyebrow in Vila’s direction. “Still wish you’d been there instead of me?”

“Nah,” Vila said. “I think we’re probably both about where we should be. I might consider the moustache though.” At Blake’s bemused look Vila said, “What? I think it made me look quite dapper,” grinned, and wandered off into the ship.


End file.
